


strange trails

by dewshi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Park Rangers, Body Horror, Dreams and Nightmares, Drinking, Horror, Humanstuck, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Necrophilia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewshi/pseuds/dewshi
Summary: I took a little journey to the unknownAnd I've come back changed, I can feel it in my bonesI fucked with the forces that our eyes can't seeNow the darkness got a hold on me"Welcome to the beautiful Incipisphere National Park. Please Close Gate. CAUTION! Dangerous area. No visitors or tourists allowed."You’ve never seen a national park that doesn’t admit visitors or tourists before.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	1. the strangers

**Author's Note:**

> not really sure how to tag this. not really... sure why i'm writing this, either, now that i think about it. but it's fun and i like it. something of a campfire ghost story aesthetic.

Here’s a list of all the things you know about Incipisphere National Park:

1\. It’s cold.

2\. It’s rocky.

3\. It’s in the middle of nowhere.

4\. It has no seasonal rangers. All of the rangers are permanent and housed at the park, which, again, is in the middle of fucking nowhere.

5\. It’s the only park that accepted your application.

So that’s the reason that you’re currently in the back seat of some guy’s Uber, watching the last traces of civilization fall behind and get replaced by pine trees on pine trees on bushes. You’re lucky to have gotten an Uber this far out at all. Your phone barely has service and you’re not even in the park yet.

“What brings you out here?” the Uber guy says. It’s drizzling outside the car, and the broken windscreen wipers of his car are almost mesmerizing. One of them slows, stutters, moves for a moment, stutters again, stops, and then keeps going. It does that over and over again in scattered patterns and makes whining noises every time.

“Well, I’m going to the national park, and I have a big-ass duffel bag with me, so that should give you enough clues for at least two or three guesses,” you respond. 

“Oh, right, of course. New ranger, huh?” the guy says. Skid, slow, stutter. “People don’t usually go to the park. Doesn’t have many rangers. Guess that’s why hardly none of them ever leave. They say the park’s haunted. Haunted by the rangers, I’d say. Did you know some folks say they all go there to run from something?”

You don’t miss the way the guy glances at you in the rearview mirror. You huff. “I’m not running from anything except homelessness, y’know? Gotta feed myself somehow.”

“Right, right,” Uber guy says. The radio fades out and then comes back in. Uber guy turns it up. “Love this song.”

That’s enough conversation for the rest of the car ride.

The park is surrounded by a tall chain link fence. Uber guy has to get out to open the gate. You take the time to read the many signs on the fence. _Welcome to the beautiful_ Incipisphere National Park. _Please Close Gate. CAUTION! Dangerous area. No visitors or tourists allowed._ You’ve never seen a national park that doesn’t admit visitors or tourists before.

Uber guy is soaked from the rain by the time he gets back in. He slams the car door shut. “Huh! Some protection, huh? What sort of secrets do you think they have in there?”

“Eh,” you say flatly. “Probably none, because if they did, I wouldn’t be allowed in, y’know?”

Uber guy chuckles. “Guess so, man.”

After Uber guy gets the car through - and stops again to close the gate behind you, what a brilliant mechanism this all is - he starts to drive you through the park. It’s… really gray and sad, honestly. The only road, the one you’re following, is an overgrown dirt road that looks like it hasn’t seen a car in years. You watch unkempt meadows of couch grass and all sorts of tall-climbing flowers you can’t name and thick forests of tall pines pass you by.

It’s at least another 15 minute drive. A deer runs across the road at one point and almost gets hit by Uber guy’s car. It does make you jolt into awareness in your seat. Uber guy chuckles about it and starts telling some story about his roommate from college, and you ignore him completely. You focus on the landscape instead. It’s almost familiar, in a weird way.

“You ever been up here before?” you ask Uber guy.

“Oh, no, not in my life,” the Uber guy says. The car bounces up and down on the dirt road. “You see all those signs on the fence? It’s not exactly a tourist spot. Shame, really. It’s really gorgeous. Don't you think?”

You hum. “I guess it’s unique.”

“Well, if you’re gonna be a ranger, I bet you’ll see a lot more of it while you’re here,” Uber guy says. You hum again. You drive up a hill, on a rocky, winding road through the woods. It’d be borderline impossible not to get lost if this wasn’t the only road in the whole park, by the looks of it. You start to forget which way it was that you came from pretty soon. At some point, you drive at the edge of the woods for a little moment and you realize that the constant shallow uphill has resulted in you now being on a cliff’s edge. Looks like a long drop down. You stop leaning against the window. Just in case.

The road comes to a stop in the middle of the woods. And by comes to a stop, you mean turns into a footpath. At its end, there’s a guy, standing in full ranger gear. It’s really foggy up here, so you can’t tell much, but he looks short - 5’3”, tops - and very angry about something. 

“Well, thanks for the ride,” you say and open the car door.

“No problem,” the Uber guy says. “Enjoy your, uh… life as a ranger, yeah?”

You grab your duffel bag and shut the door behind you. As Uber guy drives away behind you, you approach Ranger guy. He’s leaning against one of the pine trees and looks up at you, never dropping the glare. His face is chubby and round, and his hair is black and wavy. He’s wearing an almost stereotypical park ranger outfit - a thick, greenish jacket with a little embroidered patch attached, tall boots, thick gloves and a ranger hat with a mauve-and-green band around its base.

“Dave Strider?”

“In the flesh,” you say.

“Alright, welcome to Incipisphere National Park. I’m Karkat Vantas,” the guy says, standing up a little straighter, as if he’s not still a full head shorter than you. “I’ll be your… guide, I guess, to your life as a park ranger here. Yes, the hatred is, in fact, mutual, so let’s get this over with. Come on. Fuckin’ hate standing out here in the rain.”

Karkat turns around and sets off down the footpath. Alright, well, this is starting great.

“Essentially, for the first few weeks or so, I’m going to be tutoring you. I’ll show you where you’re going to eat, sleep and shit for the next… however many years you decide to stay in this hellscape,” Karkat says. “So any of your questions about it are gonna be directed to me. Get it?”

“Yeah,” you say, looking around. It’s different now than it was just watching from the car window. These trees somehow feel… truly enormous. You feel the drizzle freezing up your face. The forest is near-deathly quiet right now. No bird song, no crickets, no nothing. Just Karkat yelling. And he really does. His voice is about five times louder than it needs to be, all things considered. You hold your duffel bag tight to yourself, so it doesn’t get caught in the branches around you.

“I know you already know this from the NDA and the interviews and everything, but just so you know, legally, I’m required to repeat that the scientific research that goes on at this site, yadda yadda, is only for the eyes of the scientists performing the study and not the non-scientifically-minded park rangers, or whatever….” Karkat goes on. His voice becomes about the only sound that you can hear, and it echoes through the woods as you look around. A good enough replacement for birdsong, you guess.

Karkat leads you through the woods to a glade that seems to be better kept than the rest of the park. There’s a tall flagpole with a ranger flag flowing overhead. You can see a few log buildings - three bigger ones and some smaller ones that you assume are sheds or storage buildings. Behind them, there’s a fenced off cliff face, a firepit surrounded by log benches, and a staircase leading down the cliff face. You see an outhouse and a well, too, and a watchtower at the very edge of the forest. There’s a field spotted with trees to your right. You can see a gray, dappled horse walking around in it.

The larger trees seem to stay away from the center of the glade, though a few smaller apple trees and rowans and stuff like that spot the glade. You see a few more paths leading into the woods around you and wooden signs that you can’t read from here at each one, probably marking the trails.

“Well, here we are. This is the ranger camp,” Karkat says. “I’ll show you where you’re going to be sleeping and keeping all your crap and let you get changed and then we’ll start the tour.”

He leads you to one of the bigger buildings, the one furthest away from the footpath. It’s L-shaped, curved out like a wall separating the woods from the camp, with a porch surrounding the longer half of it. The moment that you follow Karkat up the porch steps and through the double doors, the smell of old wood hits you like a thousand bricks. There’s an old, tattered rug on the floor. Pictures of past rangers hang on the walls with names and years under their pictures. Some are old and sepia-toned, others newer and crisper. 

The whole building looks like a big hallway with doors on either side. There’s a few potted plants, pictures on the walls, a single full-length wall mirror and lots of doors.

“So this is the sleeping quarters,” Karkat says. “We only have 10 rooms, but luckily we have one pair who are willing to share a room, because they’re glued at the hip, so there’s a free room for you.”

“How many rangers are there out here?” you ask, looking at the names of everyone who came before. _Mierfa Durgas, 1982-1983. Nektan Whelan, 1967-1970. Tellas Sataro, 2002-2006. Neiryn Gorjek, 1993-1995._ They’re all wearing the same green-and-brown uniforms as Karkat, and almost none seem to have stayed for longer than half a decade. One guy looks stoned out of his mind. _Gamzee Makara,_ you read under his name. _2012-2016._ That’s last year. The most recent year you can see on here, by far. Wonder if he was your predecessor. You look around all these names and faces. You wonder if these photos were taken at the start or end of their days as rangers.

“There’s 12 of us. 13 now,” Karkat says, and then stops himself moments later. “No, sorry. There were 11 of us, and now there’s 12, with you here.”

“Alright,” you say. All of the rooms have little blackboard plaques hanging on the doors, each with a name written in a different colour of chalk. You notice that almost all of them have some sort of weird quirks to them. Karkat leads you to the last door down the hallway, with the blackboard wiped clean, and opens the door.

“Here’s your room,” he says. “Don’t take too long. I don’t have all day. There’s uniforms in the closet. Let me know what size you are after you’ve gotten one on, and I’ll dig up some more shit of that size from the storage for you. I’ll be waiting outside. Come find me when you’re ready.”

“Alright, Mr. Tutorial,” you say, pushing into the room past him. He flips you off and closes the door.

You look around your new bedroom. It smells even more of old wood than the main part of the building, and there’s a faint smell of weed, too. You’d open the window, but it looks so old and complicated that you’d probably break it if you tried. The curtains have flowers on them. There’s a closet, a desk, a small bookshelf, and a cleanly made bed with green sheets. On the ground, a round rag rug with interlocking white, brown and seafoam-coloured stripes. This place is so not you.

Luckily, you brought your posters. You can’t put them all up now, but you’re sure you’ll have plenty of time to do that later. You dump your duffel bag on the couch. Guess you have to get changed now. You open the closet to find lots and lots of those outfits that Karkat and the people in the photos were wearing. You look through them for a while, trying to find one in your size.

You land on one eventually that fits you pretty well. The pants are a little long, but you can stuff them in the boots, so that’s not too big of a deal. You stick your gloves into your belt - not really in the mood to wear those right now - and put on your ranger hat. The rain’s stopped outside by the time you’re ready to go.

When you step out into the hallway, you stop to look at yourself in the mirror. Nice looking, dude. You look like a cartoon character. The patch, too… Official Incipisphere Wilderness Ranger. Right. That’s you. You look at yourself. This is where you are now. This is your life now.

Welp. Time to go find Mr. Tutorial and get started.

He’s standing outside the main building, just like he said he would be. He’s leaning against one of the pillars by the porch. His eyes are closed when you step out and walk closer, but his eyebrows are still drawn, like he’s focusing intensely on something in his head. The grass rustles under your feet. “Hey, Mr. Tutorial.”

“Jesus, finally,” he says, opening his eyes just a crack and giving you a murderous stare. “What were you doing, having a fashion show? I told you to hurry it up.”

“Alright, fuck. I’m here now,” you say, spreading your arms. “So what was it that you wanted?”

“A tour,” Karkat says. “I’ll show you around the camp, tell you about what your daily life’s gonna be like, introduce you to everyone, et cetera, et cetera. Let you know the schedule, all the good fucking stuff.”

“Alright,” you say. “Uh… alright. So… where are we gonna start?”

“Here,” he says, stands up a little straighter and gestures around the camp. “The camp is the base of operations of the Incipisphere Rangers, and it’s going to be where you spend most of your time from now on. This building behind us is the main building. It’s got the cafeteria, the labs, the infirmary, the communications room and so on. When you’re not on the field, sleeping, or shitting, that’s usually where you’ll be.”

“Uh huh,” you say. Karkat points to the building you came from. He starts walking towards it and you follow him.”

“That’s the sleeping quarters, which you already know about. It’s where people sleep. Self-explanatory. Moving on.” You follow Karkat, speedwalking around the campsite as he points and gestures to various buildings. Dude walks fast for such a tiny guy. “This is the stables. It’s where the keep our-” he sighs- “steeds. Most of us have them. And by most, I mean all. All of us have them.”

“Will I get one?” you ask.

“Maybe, if you ask nicely,” Karkat snarls sarcastically.

You follow him around the yard, listening and looking around. Karkat takes you down the cliffside staircase. There’s a river at the bottom and two rangers crouching on the shore. “This is Feferi and Eridan. They study aquatic life in the park.”

Feferi gives you a friendly wave. Eridan glances at you, rolls his eyes, and returns to his work.

Eventually, you and Karkat move into the main building to start touring the inside, and you start interrupting Karkat’s explanations with questions.

“Where do you guys get your food?”

“We - you included, dipshit - get our food mostly by delivery. Sometimes one of _those_ people goes out to gather, fucking, berries and mushrooms and shit, and usually we can get a meal out of that, but it’s against the rules and also boring as fuck, so we don’t do it very often. We get deliveries once a month. We haul them to the pantry by hand once the truck brings them to the footpath down by the road.”

“And what about, y’know, pay and stuff?”

“It goes automatically into our bank accounts and we can spend it whenever we have vacations. Most of us do that pretty rarely. I mean, what kind of person comes here if they have a family who they want to see on a regular basis?” 

You learn a lot about the park on your tour. The technical name of the camp is Veil Point. The open fields down southwest, where you came from, are the Prospit Hills. The forest you’re in right now is called Veilwood, and it turns into the Dersewood further east. That river you spotted down the cliff is the Condesce River, and there’s a lake called Horrorterror Lake - charming - in the woods past the stable. 

The outhouse is nasty, as outhouses tend to be. The cafeteria is a little cramped, but not too bad. You’re going to be subsisting mostly on frozen steaks and canned pea soup.

Karkat brings you to the door of a room in the upstairs of the main building. It’s full of buzzing radio sounds. There’s a ranger hunched over a desk, fiddling with a some sort of radio. He doesn’t acknowledge you when you walk in. Karkat walks through the room to some sort of basket full of walkie talkies while gesturing around.

“This is the comms room. There’s no cell service or internet up here, so we use radio and walkie talkies. So, no, there won’t be any Netflix or any shit like that, and world news will be limited, too. But we usually have the radio on during mealtimes and downtime, so that we can get caught up on what the rest of the world is doing. Here. This’ll keep you connected to the rest of us, and it should let us locate you if you get lost.”

You take the walkie talkie Karkat’s handing to you and attach it to your jacket like he’s done. You really feel like an official park ranger now.

“So how big is the park?” you ask while you and Karkat are going back down the stairs to the main lobby.

“About 2 000 square miles of absolutely nothing,” Karkat responds. “Or, well, that’s the approximation based on the surrounding area, anyway. Nobody’s ever mapped the whole area out.”

“What?” you ask. “How’s that even possible? Satellite imaging and shit, and this patch of land is just… nada?”

“Dave, I promise to you, I would be thrilled to talk about this if only I gave a single atom of a shit,” Karkat says. “Unfortunately, I don’t. And clearly, the rest of the world doesn’t, either. Incipisphere Park is just a dot on the map, and it’s going to stay that way. You better get used to not knowing shit and never seeing anybody but the rest of us rangers around.”

“...It’s really just going to be the 12 of us all year round?” you ask.

“Pretty much,” Karkat says, slowing to a stop in the middle of the lobby. “Some scientist might show up at some point to review the data we’ve gathered or… whatever it is they do. But the vast majority of the time, it’s just us.”

You suddenly recall the signs on the fence. “Right. No visitors or tourists allowed.”

“No,” Karkat says. “Nobody but rangers, officials, and deliveries.”

“Why?” you ask.

“Area’s too dangerous for tourism,” Karkat says.

“Yeah, I could guess so, but why?” you ask, bewildered. “`Too many deer? What’s out there that’s so dangerous?”

“Well, you’ll find out soon the fuck enough, won’t you?” Karkat responds, cryptically.


	2. the case under your bed

The instant he says that, you hear the whizzing. And a moment later, a splash and a stinging at the back of your head, followed by a cold wetness. “Augh, shit!”

A sharp cackling echoes through the lobby. The whizz comes again, but this time you’re prepared. The water balloon hits the ground in front of you when you duck your head to dodge it.

“Oh, fuck! Stay still!” a voice shouts from the top of the staircase. You whirl around and see two women standing on the stairs with a vat full of water balloons and devious expressions on their faces. Both are wearing ranger outfits.

“Fucking water balloons? How professional,” Karkat yells. “Fuck!”

He just barely manages to dodge a water balloon one of the women throws his way.

“You’re the one who agreed to bring him here for initiation,” one of the women - dark hair down to her hips and glasses with one lens blacked out - says and throws another water balloon. You wipe at the wet patch on the back of your head. The water is dripping into your jacket’s collar.

“You weren’t meant to throw them at me! That was not part of the agreement! Who’s going to clean this up? Way to ruin the floors!” Karkat shouts. “Put down the balloons!”

“Come and get them!” the other ranger woman - shorter-haired and wearing some funky-coloured glasses - says, and Karkat squeals and dives out of the way of a pink water balloon. It hits the door behind him.

“Karkat! Did you fucking sell me out? Oh my god. I can’t believe this. I trusted you!” you shout, dodging water balloons to the best of your ability. He ignores you.

“Why do you always aim for me? It’s _his_ initiation!” Karkat screams and dodges another balloon. “Stop throwing them! This is even worse than Nepeta’s initiation!”

“Okay, no, that’s an insult to Nepeta’s initiation,” the long-haired woman on the stairs says. “That was my best work. Nothing could beat Nepeta’s initiation.”

“Okay, hey, I’m all for getting in a water balloon fight with some girls I’ve never met, but could I at least get a cut of those balloons? This doesn’t feel like a fair fight,” you complain.

“See? Someone’s got the spirit,” the long-haired woman says, hopping down the stairs two steps at a time with a water balloon jiggling dangerously in her hand. She offers her other hand to you when she gets to the bottom stair. “Vriska Serket.”

“Dave,” you say, shaking her hand. It’s wet. “Strider.”

“This is my honourable sister-in-arms, Terezi Pyrope,” Vriska says. The other woman on the stairs follows her down, grinning.

“At your service,” Terezi says. She takes a weird, deep whiff of the air. “You smell like a city boy. Southern U.S?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Grew up in Houston. How’d you know?”

Terezi taps her nose a few times while smiling knowingly, which doesn’t tell you anything at all.

“Why’d you come this far from home?” Vriska asks. “Damn long flight to take just for this place.”

You stick your hands in your pockets and shrug. “Couldn’t find anywhere else to go. This was the only park that would take me. And I haven’t lived in Texas for a while, so.”

“Right,” Vriska scoffs. “Oh, sorry about the water balloons, by the way. It’s kind of a tradition now that Terezi and I give a little welcome whenever a new ranger joins us.”

“Is it always water balloons?” you ask.

“Oh, no, not even close,” Vriska responds. “It’s different for everyone. To keep them on their toes.”

“I think my favourite one was Feferi’s,” Terezi says. “We threw stinkbombs into the sleeping quarters at 3 AM until everyone woke up and locked the doors.”

“How is that Feferi’s initiation anymore, at that point?” you chuckle. “Sounds like everyone got a slice of the action except you two.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all assholes here, so I guess we deserve the humbling fucking experience,” Karkat says. “So now we’re soaked. Is that all you wanted? Is the initiation done now?”

“Yeah, we’re done,” Vriska says smugly, massaging the water balloon in her hand menacingly. “Or are we?”

“I fucking hate you,” Karkat says. “Come on, Dave.”

“Where are we going now?” you ask. “Is the tour over?”

“I’m going to get changed, so I don’t get pneumonia,” he says. “I’d suggest you come with me, but if you want to freeze to death, it’s up to you.”

You sigh and go to follow him, but Terezi grabs your arm.

“Hold up,” she says.

“Yeah?” you ask.

“I’m kind of the colour coordinator around these parts,” Terezi says. “Not to brag or anything, but everyone else kind of sucks at it, so, y’know… once you figure out what colour of chalk you want for your sign, let me know. I have it all. Raw sienna, red violet, sunset orange-”

“I didn’t know they made chalk in that many colours,” you say.

“You’d be surprised.” Terezi’s smirk is mischievous, with some spark in it that you can feel despite not seeing her eyes. “Find me whenever.”

“Sure,” you say. “See you around.”

You follow Karkat back out into the yard. There’s a woman hauling a wheelbarrow full of dirt through the camp when you’re walking through. She looks a little older than most of the other rangers you’ve seen here- mid-30s, maybe. She stops when she sees you, dusts herself off and gives you a wide grin and a gloved wave. “Hey, Karkat!”

“Hey,” Karkat says, stopping all of a sudden. There’s an air of respect that she shares with this woman. She walks closer with big, confident steps. She’s got a bunch of pouches and a lariat on her belt. As she approaches you, you notice that the patch on her shirt is different from everyone else’s that you've seen. Senior Ranger, it says. “What’s going on?”

“Just thought I’d say hi. You’re Dave, right? Nice to meet you. I’m Aradia,” the woman says and holds out a hand. You shake it. She holds your hand firmly, almost too much so.

“Hey,” you say. “You seem like you’re in charge.”

“Oh?” Aradia asks. When you nod to her Senior Ranger patch, she laughs. “Oh, no. Ignore that. It’s just a mark of having been here for as long as I have.”

“Yeah?” you ask. “When’d you arrive?”

“I’ve been working here since 2004,” Aradia says. She looks almost melancholic for a second. “Most rangers are only out here for less than a decade before they move on with their lives, but it’s captured my heart.”

“Damn,” you say.

“Yeah,” Aradia says. “But I’m sure Karkat will fill your ear about all that sentimental shit.”

“Alright, don’t try to predict what I will and won’t do,” Karkat says, talking up to her like a kitten trying to boss a Great Dane around. “Dave, this is Aradia. She does a lot of the organizing and task force leading. Of course, a lot of that stuff should also be my responsibility, but-”

“But someone’s only been here for 6 years and not 13, so he hasn’t quite earned his Old Person Bragging Rights badge yet,” Aradia says.

“Aradia!” Karkat says. “For the last time, I don’t care about the patch!”

Aradia laughs. “You look kind of soaked. Moreso than you’d be from this rain. What happened? Initiation?”

“Terezi and Vriska decided on water balloons for their funny prank this year,” Karkat explains.

“Yeah, I’d love to keep chatting, but I’m sort of freezing my balls off and I’d really like to get changed,” you say. Aradia smiles and nods.

“Sorry for keeping you. See you around!”

“Right. Come the fuck on!” Karkat demands and starts marching off. You give Aradia a sort of ‘what a dickhead’ look and she smiles.

“He’ll grow on you.”

At the door of your room, Karkat stands in the doorway, keeping the door open.

“So, dinner is in at 5, so you have an hour to get settled,” he says. “After that, downtime for the rest of the night. Spend it setting your room up or getting to know everyone or whatever. Terezi is probably going to want to hang out at the firepit later tonight, so get ready for that. Lights out at 10 PM, at the latest. Breakfast is at 6:30 AM, ends at 8. I’m taking you out tomorrow morning to see the woods.”

“Good to know,” you grunt.

“Yeah, you’re fucking welcome,” he says. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

Then he closes the door and leaves you to your own devices. 

You get changed into a dry uniform, although Karkat hasn’t supplied you with more clothes of your size yet, so you’re left with an uniform that’s just slightly more ill-fitting. Well. You twirl around. Time to twiddle your thumbs for the rest of the hour, you guess. You look around the room. You could start putting up your posters, you guess. Set up your turntables. 

You have electricity here, that much you know, though not a lot. Karkat showed you the generator, tucked behind the main building. Pretty pathetic, and mostly used for cooking and lighting and stuff like that. You’re not sure it would survive the utter power of your turntables. Bringing them may have been a mistake. But then, what were you supposed to do? Leave them back home? You’d rather have died.

You move your duffel bag to the desk and open it. The turntables take up most of the space inside. You also have several sets of socks, boxers, shirts, etc. etc., a water bottle, your deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush, and your phone charger - not that that’s going to be super useful. Oh, and your posters. You sort through all your crap, digging the posters out and laying them on the desk.

You take one look at them and realize you don’t have anything to put them up with. Shit. Well, you can ask Karkat, or maybe Terezi, for something when you go to dinner. ...Unless the previous occupant of the room left something handy behind?

You take a look around. There’s the desk drawers, the bedside table and the shelves in the wardrobe. The bookshelf looks pretty much empty, but there is also a box under the bed, which might have something useful. Even if there’s no tape, hammer and nails or bluetack, you might as well see what kind of treasures you can find.

You start with the three desk drawers. Top one has a handgun.

Ah.

There’s something else, too- something that looks like colourful bowling pins, or clubs, or something. You close the drawer.

The bottom two are empty. What a colossal disappointment. You guess you’ll know where to go if you need a gun. Seems a little irresponsible to leave that there. You wonder if whoever lived in this room before you was actually allowed to have that or not. You’d have to assume that probably. You mean, there are bears and stuff in these woods, so… maybe it’s for self-defense. You didn’t notice a gun on Karkat’s belt, or any of the other rangers’ for that matter, but he did say that the area is dangerous.

You can just about see to the back of the shelf above the wardrobe’s hangers if you stand on your toes. There’s a camo backpack. You take it out, and find it empty. Again, disappointing. You put it back. It might become useful later. You close the wardrobe and walk to the bedside table. It only has one small drawer. It creaks and refuses to open. You have to give it a few sharp tugs to see inside.

You find scattered bunches of rolling papers, some filters, and a ziploc bag full of weed. Yeah, actually, that makes sense. You close the drawer. You’ve never been much of a weed guy yourself.

Now there’s only one place to look. The case underneath the bed. It’s one of those thicker, older chests, the kind that would hide valuable family antiques if it were in the attic of a suburban East Coast home. You sit on the floor, cross-legged, and pull it out. It’s heavy, but you don’t know if it’s just because of the case itself or because of its contents. It has a thin layer of dust on the top, like it hasn’t been opened in at least a few months. You draw a smiley face in the dust.

The lock mechanism isn’t too complicated; a few clamps on the front and a pair on each side. But it’s clear that this thing was meant to hold something important. You open it up, and it takes you a few moments to process what you see. And when you process it, you don’t believe it.

The gold tooth. The gray, backwards cap. The red cheeks. The fucking eyes. All the same, all the exact fucking same. You scramble backwards and kick the case back under the bed. It slides in, causing the lid to slam closed from the movement. No, no, no, no, no. Not that thing, not again. You thought, you hoped you’d never see it ever again.

You stare at the case for at least a full minute, waiting - expecting, almost - for it to move or break or twitch or something, waiting for some evidence of the thing that you saw inside.

But nothing happens at all.

Slowly, you start to relax. You take a deep breath. You must have been imagining him. It must have been a hallucination because of stress or something. There’s no way he’s here. No way. How would he have gotten here? Into this case, in this room, under your bed. You left that thing in your old apartment in Houston. It can’t move on its own. And even if he could, why _now_? It’s been _14 years._

Maybe it wasn’t actually him. It couldn’t have been. Maybe it was just… another puppet that looked almost exactly like him. Maybe whoever it was that lived in this room last also had a puppet made by whoever it was that made… the one that Bro had. And because of everything, you just kind of assumed that that was the same one, even though it’s not. That’s the most logical explanation, right?

…You can't tell anyone else about this. You don’t know what they’d say, and you don’t want to know.

But you can’t stay in this room either. Not so long as you know whatever is in that case is under the bed. So, instead, you get up and brush yourself off. It’s dusty in here.

You step out into the hallway. Maybe you can find Terezi or Aradia or someone to talk to. Not Karkat, though. You’re not in the mood to deal with his personality after that encounter.

You stare at the ground on your way out of the sleeping quarters. Maybe you should have taken that gun with you. Hell, maybe you should have put a few bullets through that case, just to be safe. Or, y’know, just for the hell of it. Would have let you let out some damn steam, that’s for sure.

You open the door of the sleeping quarters and walk head-first straight into someone. You stumble backwards, and whoever you ran into catches your arm. “Oh, so sorry! Are you okay?”

You blink your eyes open and stand up straight. The woman standing in front of you in full ranger get-up is taller than you (a rare feat) and has perfect winged eyeliner. She’s got a red scarf around her neck and a gentle look on her face. You correct your shades on your face. “Uh, yeah. I’m fine. I’m Dave. Just got here today.”

“Kanaya. Nice to meet you,” Kanaya says and offers out a hand. You shake it. Her grip on your hand is firm, but gentle. Refined.

You brush hair from your face. “Thought I’d get some fresh air before dinner.”

“Well, there’s certainly no deficit of that here,” Kanaya says. She steps to the side to let you pass her. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“Alright,” you say. “See you around.”

“See you!” Kanaya says. You walk out and leave her to her devices. You hop down the porch stairs of the quarters. Looks like there’s a bit more life in the camp, now. A burly (like, fucking gigantic) guy is carrying a sack from one of the sheds to the stables. Aradia is talking to a short girl sitting on the back of a brindled pony. The pony shifts under the girl, and she pats its neck. Karkat is talking intensely with Eridan and Feferi.

Wonder what there is to do all day out here. Oh, yeah, Terezi did say to track her down when you’d decided what colour of chalk to write your name with, didn’t she? Maybe you could go and see if you can find her. You walk over to the main building. That’s the last place you saw her; might as well be the first place you look. You start speed-walking across the yard. It’s hard to shake the feeling that everyone’s eyes are on you.

You walk up the steps at the main building and step inside. You don’t have to look hard, because the cafeteria doors are open and you can hear Terezi and Vriska’s sharp voices from the front doorway. You find them there, sitting at one of the tables with the guy from the comms room. He’s short, with a bowlcut and oval-shaped glasses. He’s looking completely expressionless, fiddling with some sort of machine.

“Ugh, you’re such a bore,” Vriska says melodramatically. When she sees you enter, her eyes light up. “Hey, if it’s not the newcomer. Come over here and bring some life to this conversation!”

You slide into a chair next to the comms guy. He gives you a disinterested glance. Wow. Tough crowd. “Hey, girls. How y’all doing today?”

“Delightful,” Terezi says.

“Sollux, this is the new guy,” Vriska says. “Dave Strider.”

Sollux sniffs and gives you another glance. With a heavy lisp, he asks, “any relation to that porn murderer?”

“Uh-” you say, and Vriska laughs. It’s an almost acidic sound, the kind that makes you feel immediately condescended towards.

“He’s _joking,_ ” she says. “He’s not funny, but he tries.”

Sollux pushes up his glasses. “Sollux. Captor.”

“Cool to meet you,” you say awkwardly. “What are you doing?”

“Fixing one of the wildlife cameras,” Sollux says and returns to his work. You choose not to ask why he’s doing it in the cafeteria and not in the comms room, but he responds anyway. “Someone ruined my desk with water balloons and now I have to wait for it to dry.”

“Oh, wow. I wonder who,” you say. Vriska and Terezi both give you faux-innocent grins.

“Mm-hmm. You know, you come out to the middle of nowhere thinking you won’t need to deal with morons, but I guess that was an unrealistic expectation,” Sollux says. 

“Aw, you love us,” Terezi says and looks like she’s going to pat Sollux’s head, but just slaps him on the face instead. She almost knocks off his glasses. Uh… alright. “Oh, sorry.”

“Right in my eye,” Sollux grumbles.

“Can you blame a girl for her inaccuracy? You have no sympathy for the visually impaired,” Vriska laments.

“I literally also have glasses,” Sollux says.

“Visually impaired?” you ask. “The red lenses look a little impractical.”

“Oh, they’re not for seeing. They’re for fashion,” Terezi says and shifts her glasses. “I’m blind.”

“You’re blind?” you ask.

“Yep!” She waves a hand in front of her face. “As a bat.”

“Wow, alright,” you say. “Doesn’t that get in the way of, y’know, being a park ranger?”

“I have my workarounds,” Terezi says cryptically. You swear, the people here are so fucking weird.

“And what about you, hothead? Why are you wearing shades indoors? Or outdoors in this weather, for that matter,” Vriska asks.

“I don’t know,” you say, shrugging. “I just like them.”

“You’re wearing shades?” Terezi cackles. “Didn’t know we were dealing with a genuine grade-A coolkid here!”

Sollux grunts and picks up his wildlife camera. “I can’t get any work done with you people hounding me. I’m going to go sit in the watchtower..”

“Enjoy the nature!” Vriska calls out after him. He flips her off on his way out of the door. You do not know what you were expecting from this place, but this is definitely not that. Vriska scoffs. “What a loser.”

“Are you guys always so… y’know…” you say, gesturing for a word that doesn't exist. 

“Powerful?” Vriska asks. Powerful is definitely not the word you were looking for. “Yes.”

“Alright. Good to know.”

You sit there chatting with them until dinnertime starts. There’s no indication that it has. Eventually, Vriska and Terezi just kind of get up and head towards the kitchen. Karkat wasn’t lying about what your diet was going to be like here. You can smell the canned pea soup before you even walk into the kitchen. You see Terezi scrunch her nose in disgust.

There’s a guy in a wheelchair standing inside, pouring himself a bowl of pea soup. You’ve never seen a ranger in a wheelchair before. He looks up sheepishly. His voice is so quiet you can barely hear it. “Oh. H- hi.”

“Dave, this is Tavros. He does the cooking,” Vriska says proudly, as though Tavros’ existence is an achievement of hers, and gestures to him. They really do not see disabilities here. You guess there was a wheelchair ramp on all the staircases, though you didn’t really think about it.

“Hey,” you say. “I’m Dave.”

Tavros smiles, but it kind of wavers on and off his face, as if he can’t keep it up for longer than a few seconds. “I do… I do more than cook, but, y’know. Nice to meet you. Soup?”

“Yeah, sure.”

You sit next to Tavros, Terezi and Vriska in the cafeteria, eating your pea soup. It tastes about as stale and vile as you’d expect. The other rangers - most of whom you’ve met at this point - trickle in one by one or in small groups and sit in various spots around the cafeteria. You don’t say much, not even to Terezi and Vriska, who are keeping up a very lively conversation. You can hear Karkat talking as well, though you’re not paying that much attention.

Even though you’re not making any noise, you can’t stop feeling like you’re being watched. Like the other rangers keep shooting you glances when they think you’re not looking. You wonder if it’s just because you’re new, or if there’s something else on their minds.

You finish your pea soup quicker than anyone else, but you don’t really want to leave first. You end up just sitting there for a while, toying with your utensils. You’re shaken from your stupor by Terezi standing up, aggressively hitting the side of her glass of water with her spoon. “Hear ye, hear ye!”

The whole cafeteria stirs, paying attention now to Terezi.

“On this fine day, a new member has joined the ranks of the Incipisphere Rangers! Everyone give a warm welcome to Dave Strider!”

There’s a sort of awkward, uncertain applause that echoes through the room for about ten seconds.

“As is tradition, tonight we’re going to have a bonfire night! Bring all your secret snacks and booze and a good attitude! Be there!” Terezi says cheerfully. “Be there, or be in the river tomorrow. Your choice!”

She slides back down into her chair. Jeez. You lean closer. “You’re not actually going to throw them in the river if they don’t show up, right?”

“Yeah,” Vriska says. “Not that anyone is going to skip out. Getting drunk by the firepit is, like, one of the only joys we still have out here. That, and throwing water balloons at newcomers.”


	3. the firepit, in embers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> exposition time exposition time

On your way out of the cafeteria, you catch up to Terezi. “Hey, Terezi.”

“Yeah, coolkid?” Terezi says. 

You snort. “Do you instantly assign nicknames to everyone else, or just me?”

“Pretty much everyone, more or less. Someone always does, if I don’t,” Terezi says, walking backwards while facing you. “Why? You don’t like it?”

“No, I don’t give a shit, it’s cool,” you say. “I just wanted to come and talk to you about my blackboard in the quarters.”

“Ohh,” Terezi says. “Yeah, sure! Pick a colour yet?”

“I did,” you say. “Red. Just like, normal red. Not ‘venetian red’ or ‘red caramel apple’ or anything. Just, y’know, red.”

“Oh, yesss. Red. That’s my favourite one,” she says. From one of the pouches on her belt, she pulls out a Crayola box and carefully pulls out a piece of red chalk. You’re not 100% sure how she was able to tell which colour it was without being able to see. She hands it to you and you take it. There are chunks missing, almost as if they’d been bitten off. “Give it back to me when you’re done.”

“Sure,” you say.

You spend the rest of the evening setting your room up. Terezi gives you some thumbtacks for putting up your posters, and an hour later, your room starts to actually look like a place where you’d be willing to live. You kick the case a little bit deeper under the bed and resolve to try and forget that it’s there. It’s dark outside by the time you glance out and see the orange flames of the firepit starting to rise.

You leave the quarters and see that almost everyone’s already gathered around, hunched on the log benches around the fire. You jog over and take a seat next to Kanaya. Aradia offers you a beer. You take it. The short girl is roasting marshmallows on a long stick.

“I’m just saying,” Eridan is saying as you sit down. He has an accent you can’t place. It sounds almost English but off, more wavy. You realize it might be fake. “If Karkat could do it, it can’t be that hard.”

“It wasn’t fucking easy,” Karkat says. “There’s so little information on that stuff. Especially out here. You have to just guess and it can be fucking terrifying.”

Tavros keeps fiddling with his hands. “Yeah, I don’t think you, uh, quite understand the difficulty of it.”

“What are you all chatting about?” you ask and take a swig of the beer.

“Just discussing… animal rescuing,” Feferi says. “Y’know, it’s a very close topic to many of our hearts.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” you say.

“Should we do an introduction circle?” Kanaya says. “I know most of the rest of us have all heard it a million times, but I think, um… Dave, was it? Dave could really use getting to know us a little better, and I think we all want to know more about him, too.”

“Sure. Why don’t you start?” Aradia asks. Kanaya hums.

“I’m Kanaya Maryam. I’ve been a ranger here for… four years now? Oh, I turned 30 earlier this month,” Kanaya tells you. 

“Oh, congrats,” you say.

“Thank you.” She smiles. “Hmm… I studied biology and ECE before I came here. I enjoy crocheting. And, ah… I don’t know. My favourite animal is the luna moth.”

“Are we seriously doing favourite animals again?” Karkat asks.

“What’s your suggestion?” Eridan asks.

“Literally anything else,” Karkat suggests. When everyone keeps staring at him, he rolls his eyes. “Alright. I’m Karkat Vantas, I’m 26. Came here in the summer of 2011 and… my favourite soda is Dr. Pepper.”

“Favourite soda? That’s your idea?” Sollux says. Karkat punches him in the arm.

“Also, Dr. Pepper? Jesus Christ,” you say. “Get some tastebuds, dude.”

“Fuck you! It’s good and underappreciated!” Karkat shouts.

“Should we all just share facts about ourselves that we want to, without really caring about what they are, exactly?” Feferi suggests. “That way there wouldn’t be, y’know, arguing about this.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Aradia says. “I’m Aradia Megido. I’m 34. I got my senior ranger rank in… psh, what, 2014? Has it been that long already? I grew up down south, in Jyväskylä, and then I moved to the capital to study archaeology in university. What else? Well, I love Indiana Jones movies, predictably.”

“Me next!” the short girl says. “I’m Nepeta Leijon. I’m 27 years old. My family moved to a town just south of here when I was really little. I only started working as a ranger here in the spring of last year, but I’ve been a Girl Scout since I was 6.”

“Nice to meet you,” you say. Nepeta smiles. She elbows the tall, muscular man sitting next to her- the only person whose name you don’t know yet. He grumbles awkwardly.

“Equius Zahhak,” he says in a deep and monotone voice. His mouth is locked in a constant grimace and his hair looks extremely oily. “I am 29 years old and have been a ranger for two years. It is pleasurable to meet you.”

You sit there for a long time, listening to everyone’s introductions. Terezi Pyrope, 29, been here since 2012, former art student (and possible chalk eater). Feferi Peixes, 31, 2013, hydrobiologist and researcher. Tavros Nitram, 32, 2013, expert cook and apparently used to do a lot of the stable care. Eridan Ampora, 28, 2015, also a researcher - and seemingly a total douchebag.

By the time it’s your turn, you realize you have no clue what to say about yourself.

“Um,” you say, with everyone’s eyes on you. “I’m Dave. Dave Strider. I’m 27. I’m from Houston, originally, but I moved to Washington a few years back with my dad and brother. And, uh… I play a lot of music. Play the guitar, the drums, do a lot of mixing. And I’m kind of a rap god.”

“Oh, cool!” Nepeta says. “We’ve kind of been in the need of someone who knows how to play the guitar. Tavros knows the banjo, but it’s a little…”

“It’s broken,” Tavros says. “Two of the strings snapped and we don’t have replacemen- m- replacements.”

“Well, uh,” you say. “If you want me to play something, sure, I can try. It’s just… it’s been a couple years since I did. And I don’t have a guitar.”

“We have a guitar,” Aradia says. “One of the former rangers left one here probably a decade or so back and never came back for it. It’s completely collecting dust in the storage. It's completely out of tune, though.”

“That’s not too big of an issue, probably,” you say. “How often do rangers leave?”

“Recently, not too often,” Aradia says. “We were kind of undermanned around the turn of the decade, and almost everyone here now has joined in in the last five or so years. During that time, we haven’t lost any rangers. ...Well, y’know, except…”

“First marshmallow’s done!” Nepeta says. “Who wants a s’more?”

Nepeta constructs a s’more and passes it over to Terezi. For a second, you want to ask Aradia to finish her sentence. But when you look at her, you get the feeling that she wouldn’t want to, if you asked. You opt not to.

You sit there for more than a few hours, talking about nothing with your new colleagues. They’re definitely an eccentric bunch, but you don’t hate them. Yet, at least. Karkat’s yelling gets a bit grating after a while, and you still don’t think you could allow yourself to be left alone with Equius, but other than that. The fire is starting to die down and into low cinders by the time you speak up.

“So, are there, like… any scary stories about the park that you guys all know?” you ask.

“No!” Karkat says sharply, to nobody’s apparent surprise. Vriska rolls her eyes, and everyone else just kind of looks bored. “No ghost stories.”

“Aw, dude, why not?” you ask. “You gonna have trouble sleeping at night?”

“I will, but not because of any stories,” Karkat says. “We just… don’t tell that shit here.”

“Oh, here comes Karkat Vantas, the fun-ruiner. In his element once again,” Eridan sighs, leaning back on his arms.

“Karkat,” Aradia says. “Come on. What’s the harm?”

Karkat doesn’t say anything. Then he sighs. “You know what? Fine. Tell your stories for all I care. I’m going to bed.”

He stands up and marches off. When he’s out of earshot, you huff. “Is he always like that?”

“Pretty much,” Vriska says.

“He has his reasons for being the way he is,” Kanaya says. “Don’t judge him just yet.”

“Well, let’s hear the story,” you say. “Who’s going to tell it?”

“That would be me,” Aradia says, stretching her back. “I’m kind of a horror story connoisseur.”

“Alright, alright,” you say. “I’m here for it.”

In the low light of the embers, the way Aradia leans forward makes her almost disappear into the shadows of the forest night behind her. When she stars speaking, her voice is lower, huskier - kind of in that way that people telling horror stoires often do, but less fake; it’s like her cheery, peppy camp counsellor image has all been a front, and the ghostly look in her eyes now is what she’s really like underneath.

“There’s been a legend passed down through the rangers of this park for several decades,” she starts. “Stories of a vile creature in the woods have been told by the rangers of Incipisphere Park ever since before I was even born. Nobody knows about every dark occurrence that’s happened in this park, but this story is definitely one of them.

“When I first came to Incipisphere Park, nights like this were a lot more common. When we would all huddle up around the firepit, hoping to find some light in the dark, some safety in each other’s presence from whatever it is that lurks in the Dersewood at night. There was talk of a killer bear, or a giant squid monster in Horrorterror Lake… at the time, we made fun of them. We came up with our own stories that we knew were false, just to poke fun at the idea of a monster in the park. Clown wolves and monster frogs… stuff like that.

“But as the years went by, some of the older rangers grew more and more on edge. They stopped arranging these bonfire nights, and spent their evenings inside instead, in their quarters. They would glance around, like they were expecting something to jump out at them at any moment from the shadows in the corners of the room. At first I thought they were just lazy. But then I asked. It was a senior ranger named Jude who told me something he’d never told to anyone.

“We were sitting around the firepit - just me and Jude - on a night exactly like this one. Dark, chilly and overcast. It was pitch black, and with the dying flames, we could barely see each other. He leaned forward and started talking in a hushed voice. He asked me if I knew what had happened to Kurloz - an old colleague of ours, who’d left the park a few months before without ever telling anyone. I told him no, and he made me promise that I couldn’t ever tell anyone.

“It’s not a secret that Incipisphere Park is a dangerous place. They don’t let visitors in for a reason. I knew that when I came here. But I started to get nervous when Jude started his story. He told me that he and Kurloz had gone out riding late at night. They’d taken the Dersewood trail up to Fuschia Rapids to check on some weird activity Jude had seen on the wildlife camera. They thought it might have been some hiker who somehow ended up on park grounds.

“As they rode closer to where the wildlife camera was, they started to notice weird things. Some of the trees had fallen into the middle of the trail, even though it was a still night, and there hadn’t been any strong winds or thunder. And Jude told me that when he looked at the stumps, they looked rough, but deliberate. He’d seen similar marks on trees when he was a wildlife ranger in Illinois. The beavers left nasty marks on the trees. But they weren’t beaver marks. They were… sharper, wider. Like wolf bites taken straight out of the wood.

“He and Kurloz rode on into the woods. They got to where the wildlife camera was supposed to be, but it’d been torn down and broken. The wiring inside had been bitten out, and it didn’t look like the work of a rabid wolf - which was what Jude had been assuming from those bite marks on the trees. This looked like a job done by something that knew what it was doing. Something intelligent… and vicious.

“Kurloz and Jude agreed they had to go back to camp and take a look at the damage the camera had taken, but then, something struck. They heard Jude’s steed - Byers, he called it - neigh in panic and gallop away, and Kurloz’s - her name was Miracle - was whining in agony, moaning almost like a human. Something was dragging the poor thing through the forest; something that brought Jude to tears, just remembering it.

“Jude shone his flashlight into the forest. There, they saw the thing. Bec Noir.” 

When the creature’s name falls from Aradia’s lips, Nepeta curls up into a fetal position and whimpers. Equius puts an arm around her and pulls her closer to him.

“It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of that monster,” Aradia says, almost whispering and staring at you with wide eyes. “But it was the first time anyone I personally knew had seen it. I would trust Jude with my life, and he swore that that was what it was. It was like a wolf, pitch black in fur like it was coated in tar. Its eyes were dark, empty and lifeless, as if they’d been gouged out. It smelled of rot and decay, every joint of its disturbingly humanoid body twisted and contorted at angles that only a dead person’s body could achieve.

“It sank its wolf teeth into Miracle’s leg, tearing out muscle by muscle. Kurloz cried out and pulled out a gun to shoot at the thing. But no matter how many bullets he fired, Bec Noir only seemed to get angrier. Black ooze dripped from its jaw and its long, spindly claws wrapped tighter around the body of its prey. Its ribs and bones - or whatever it was that it had under its shaggy, black fur - poked out like knives, that’s what Jude said.

“They stood there for an hour in the freezing cold of the night, watching, listening to that monster’s meal. Jude wasn’t an easily scared guy, but the way he looked when he talked about what he saw that night… it was like he had seen a ghost. But then, when it had had its fill of Miracle’s flank, it looked up to them. The bloodlust hadn’t faded from its eyes, and it leapt forward.

“Jude couldn’t go on telling the tale from that point on. He could only remember shouting, and the sound of gunshots and tearing flesh vanishing into the night behind him as he ran back to the camp. After that night, Kurloz was never seen again- not by the rangers or anyone else.”

By the time the story is over, the fire has died out completely. All of the rangers are in complete silence, not knowing how to follow up that story. Eventually, Tavros breaks the silence with a cough, and a gentle, “what happened to Jude?”

“He served as a ranger until… 2007, I think. His grandfather got sick and he flew back to Manchester to take care of him,” Aradia says, now back to her cheery attitude. You can’t see her in the dark, but you could swear that her ghostly stare is probably burned into your brain forever. You had no idea she, of all people, could look that creepy. “He was a nice guy. Kind of a geek, but nice.”

Soon afterwards, the remaining rangers trek back to the sleeping quarters.

You peek out of your room after getting changed into your pajamas. The practice seems to be to come out to the back porch with a cup of water to brush your teeth, so you follow everyone’s.lead. Kanaya, Sollux and Feferi are in a line on the porch when you come out. You stand next to Feferi and start to unscrew your toothpaste tube, but suddenly there’s a hand on yours, stopping you.

“Oh, no, no, that brand’s recipe has got sodiate nervine-3 sulfates. It’s really bad for the waters. Hold on, I think I have…” Feferi says. She starts digging around in the pocket of her pajama pants and pulls out a tiny tube of toothpaste. “Here! Use this instead.”

You take the tiny tube. It looks like the kind of sampler, travel toothpastes you might get from a hotel room or with some Moms At Home magazine order. You read from the label. “‘ _Queen Meenah Organic Non-Toxic Toothpaste. Contains no fluoride or sodiate nervine-3 sulfates. Peach & Sea Salt.’_ Peach and sea salt?”

“It’s surprisingly good,” Feferi says. She spits into the bushes that surround the back porch. “Try it.”

You shrug. Why the hell not. You squeeze out the pale salmon-coloured paste onto your toothbrush and try it. It’s… well, weird. A little salty, a little sweet, a little tart. Not bad, but definitely unusual. Feferi looks at you expectantly. You look at her and give her a polite shrug. That seems to be enough for her, and she smiles.

Just as she’s about to go back in and leave you alone to brush your teeth, she seems to hesitate. You look over and find her examining you with curious eyes. You shoot her a questioning look. Feferi looks almost conspiratory at that, and says, “oh, nothing. Um, it’s just… you know, it’s said every ranger here came to run from something.”

You recall the Uber driver’s words. You wait for her to elaborate, but she just looks away, and walks off. You stare after her for a good few moments. What the fuck was that?

You lie awake that night, in your cot. You twist in the weirdly coarse green blanket and get uncomfortably cold despite being wrapped in it like a tasty-ass burrito. You don’t know if Aradia’s story just got to you - you don’t think so, you’ve never scared of horror stories before - or if it’s the nagging knowledge of what lies in the case under you.

You roll over again. You need to piss.

…This is hopeless.

You get up and put on some slippers and head out of the sleeping quarters.

When you come back inside, you notice that one of the doors is cracked open and a light is on inside. The blackboard hanging outside it reads “KARKAT” in whitish chalk. There’s a little red angry face drawn next to it. Somehow you suspect that wasn’t Karkat’s own addition. 

You walk up and give the door a few gentle knocks. It creaks as it slides open. Karkat is there, lying on his bed. The lamp on the bedside table is on, and he’s reading a book. A trashy Amazon original romance novel, by the looks of it. The cover is of a debauched, desperate regency-era girl in the hands of a very fancily-dressed vampire man. You can’t make out the full title from the door, but you can see the words “duke” and “lustful hunger.”

His eyebrows are locked in intense focus on the page. For a second, you wonder if you’re interrupting something. Then he looks up at you. “What is it?”

“I thought it was lights out at 10,” you say, leaning against the doorframe.

“You’re really going to make yourself out to be the guy who bitches about lights out? That’s my job, asshole,” he says. “Can I fucking help you or are you just here to make my life difficult?”

“Mm,” you say and briefly contemplate telling Karkat about the case underneath your bed. You think about what his reaction would be. “No. Just thought I’d say ‘fuck you.’”

“Right, well, fuck you too,” Karkat says. Looks back down at the page. You’re about to leave when he talks again. “What story did Aradia tell you?”

“Hm?” you ask. “Oh, the campfire story?”

“Yeah,” Karkat says.

You sigh. “It was about… some big black werewolf creature that supposedly killed a colleague of hers in the mid-oughts.”

“Right.” Karkat glances at you and then at the wall of his room. “Right.”

There’s silence for a few seconds.

“Did you like it?” he asks, then. “The story.”

“Uh… I don’t know.” You shift, trying to look unbothered. “She’s definitely a good storyteller.”

“Yeah.” Karkat chuckles. “She used to be a camp counsellor, supposedly. Prides herself on how in control she always acts like she is up here. Just because she’s been here the longest.”

“You sound jealous,” you say.

“I’m not,” Karkat insists. “I admire her. But she can also be fucking insufferable, sometimes.”

“Hm,” you say.

“Do you believe her? About Bec Noir,” Karkat asks, then.

“Um, no,” you say flatly. “It was just a bullshit ghost story. That guy, Kurloz, probably just left or something, if he ever existed.”

“He did exist,” Karkat says. “His photo is somewhere in the hallway. So is Jude’s.”

“For real?” you ask. Karkat nods. The way he’s talking about this… You have to ask. “Do you believe her?”

“Me?” Karkat asks. You nod. That makes him stop for a second and think about his response. He even closes the book in his hands, carefully placing a bookmark on the page before he does. He doesn’t look at you as he talks. “I’ve seen a lot of shit in this park that I never thought I’d believe before I got here. Incipisphere Park isn’t exactly a normal place.”

That’s when he turns to look at you. His eyebrows are still drawn in that same way that they’ve been ever since you first met him, but now there’s a new kind of intensity in his eyes. You swallow, but very quietly. “So you believe in ghost stories?”

“I don’t know,” Karkat says. “Some of them are bullshit. But I wouldn’t be sure about all of them.”

That’s all he says. Then he breaks eye contact, just as soon as he had made it in the first place. He looks a little uncomfortable himself.

Not that you’re uncomfortable. You huff. “Alright. Good night.”

“Good night,” Karkat says. “Don’t forget that we’re going on a trail ride after breakfast. If you don’t wake up yourself, I’ll fucking do it for you.”

“Duly noted,” you say, and close the door.

Before you head back to bed, you take a moment to look around the hallway. You scan the dozens of faces on the wall of all of the people who have served here before you, and then your eyes land on him. _Kurloz Makara. 1999-2006._ The picture is of a lanky guy staring into the middle distance. His hair is dark and fuzzy, and he has a languid smile on his face.

You head back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to everyone who had to google where jyväskylä is


	4. the path through veilwood

Your name is Karkat Vantas.

As it stands, you’ve slept for less than an hour this past night. You woke up in a cold sweat at 3 in the morning and haven’t been able to sleep since. You decided not to waste time trying to sleep any more than you already had, and instead got changed and wandered outside.

The sky was starting to get lighter, though that was concealed behind a thick layer of fog and low clouds. The moss and grass rustled under your boots when you left the sleeping quarters and walked up to the watchtower. Might as well keep an eye on the woods for a while. You had nothing better to spend your time with. 

So here you are, with a radar detector and a radio on the table in front of you and a vast expanse of wilderness out there. You’re expecting to be alone for several hours in that damp, wooden hut. So you’re - let’s say - moderately alarmed when the stairs creak and you see someone standing in the doorway.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Aradia asks, looking tired. She looks more composed than you feel.

“Not a chance,” you admit. “...It’s been even harder recently.”

“I can imagine.” She pulls up another chair and sits down next to you.

You watch the radar detector beep at nothing for a while before you talk. “Why’d you have to tell Dave that story about Kurloz and Bec?”

Aradia hesitates to respond. “...I thought it’d lighten his spirits.”

“Lighten his spirits? He has enough bullshit to get through in this place. Way to make his life seem like more of a horror story than it might already.” You lean back in your chair.

“I fucking hate that we can’t just tell him,” Aradia groans. “Why do we have to hide it?”

“And risk him not being able to see it? Aradia, we have to hide it,” you growl. “I wish we didn’t, but we depend on that. We don’t know if he’s ever going to find out.”

“He’s going to find out,” Aradia says with too much conviction. “I can feel it. He’s going to know.”

“You can’t fucking know that! You’re giving him too much credit! Even if he can, he’s too much of a thick-skulled imbecile right now. He has to learn slowly, just like everyone else,” you grumble, crossing your arms. Aradia gives you a pointed look, and you return it. Idiots think they can just wander in and find everything out like they own the place. Even Aradia forgets they can’t. “He didn’t believe your story.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“I asked. He said he thought it was just a pointless campfire story. He acted as if it wasn’t obvious how rattled he was.”

“Did he ask you what you thought?” Aradia asks. You turn to look at her. Her expression is knowing. Fuck her and her goddamn omniscience. You sigh raggedly.

“I tried to be vague. ...Look, Aradia, I know you changed the details, but that fucking story is too close to the truth.”

“It’s not like I told him everything,” Aradia says. She leans forward, studying the callouses on her own knuckles. “You know I try to make it sound like a campfire story. And clearly that worked well enough.”

“Right, and what’s he going to think when his _life_ becomes a… 'campfire story?'”

Aradia thinks for a second. “I don’t know. But I think he’ll be fine.”

~

You are now Dave Strider.

You’re walking through some sort of forest. That’s how it feels, anyway - you can hear the birds singing, even though none of their songs are ones that you’ve heard before. You can feel twigs and leaves under your bare feet. The trees are gnarled and they curl around you, leaning like they’re trying to grasp you. The branches are so curled and low that you have to step over them like you would roots.

Everything is coated in a weird light. If you had to describe the colour, it’d be… red, purple maybe. Some shade of pink. It seems to change every time you turn. More than light, it’s almost like fog, actually. Like a fine mist that you can feel sticking to your skin like water vapour or oil. It smells sickly sweet, like fake strawberry flavourant or peach and sea salt toothpaste. It’s only in the woods, though. When you look up, you see the sky- it’s pitch black - not pink - and almost starless.

When you press the trees with your hands for support, they’re grimy. They leave a thick ooze your hands, even though you can’t see it when you look. You can just feel that there’s something there. Whatever that ooze is, you feel it under your bare feet, too. It’s like you’re walking on a surupy pancake.

You don’t exactly know what you’re looking for. The forest around you is unfamiliar. Not like any place you’ve been before that you can recall, even ignoring the whole being pink and grimy thing. So you’re pretty sure you’re lost, but you keep walking anyway. Your feet seem to know where they’re doing. You let them lead you. You’re glad to not have to think about it. In this mist, you can barely breathe, let alone see where you’re going.

As you walk, the weirdest sound starts to fill your ears, drowning out the foreign birdsong. It sounds like… carnival music. Fast-paced calliope and brass, accompanied by an overexcited drums. You can hear hollering, too. Joyous shouts and delighted screams, like those of people on a rollercoaster. You hear the honking of horns and laughter. You keep walking, you think towards it, though you still don’t know. It keeps getting louder and faster. You get the feeling it would, even if you stopped right here.

You follow the sound, and see a glow through the trees. It’s the same colour as the strawberry mist around you. It’s bright, though, and dizzying. All the while, that goddamn music keeps getting louder. You feel like you have to get rid of it. You’d do anything to make that goddamn fucking music disappear, and to get a proper fucking breath in this mist. You stumble through the woods, following the feverish sounds that never seem to stop.

The woods open up, and you see a glade before you- a giant carnival. Rollercoasters and ferris wheels and booths of those games you’ve only played once or twice in your whole life. Colourful lights - some yellow, red, green or blue, but mostly a head-breaking brilliant magenta - hang all over it. The music is deafening, so loud that you feel like you’re drowning.

You run through the circus. You have to find someone, something in here that can help you. You run past visitors of the circus, all of them clad in colourful clown clothes. You don’t get good looks at their faces, but from what you see, they’re grinning. Every last one, grinning like their faces have no other purpose. Toothy and eyeless, they wander around holding tickets and cotton candy. You push past them, push past everyone.

Their mouths don’t move, but they’re all laughing now, so loud that their voices almost drown out the calliope music. The laughs and screams are no longer those of enjoyment- they’re laughing at you, laughing at this fucking music you can’t escape. They’re screams of horror. You scream, too, head bursting.

Then you ram into something, someone. You stumble backwards, on your ass on the ground. The figure is tall, thin and lanky. Its gaping, hungry mouth is locked in the same grin as every other clown here. But you can barely see him through the fog. But despite that, you can still see in his silhouette something that makes you think almost subconsciously of that thing that still haunts you, that thing in the case under your bed, and he says, “Hello, Dave.”

You wake up in a cold sweat. Your throat aches. You gasp for air and stumble out of bed. You press your back against the nearest wall you can find. It takes you probably a full minute to fully register your surroundings. The smell of old wood has swiftly replaced the sickly sweet mist. You see the forest outside and the bed, sheets torn off and visibly damp from sweat. Not being home anymore makes centering yourself that much harder, but you manage it eventually.

Jesus Christ. You haven’t had a nightmare that bad since you were a kid. And that one felt… stranger. More fantastical than your usual nightmares. You wipe your face and try to catch your breath. Fuck.

Your phone has been sitting on the bedside table. You may not have cell service up here, but it still has its uses. You check the time, although you already have an inkling from how light it is outside. 6:14 AM. Huh. Alright. You’re okay with that. Usually, after an experience like that, you’d expect it to be 4 or 5. Back home, waking up early felt like a curse. You guess it’s not such a problem out here.

You change into your ranger gear. It still feels weird to have a uniform instead of just throwing on any T-shirt you find on the floor. Well, you do still have on your own shirt underneath, but still. You fasten your walkie talkie to your jacket.

As you’re heading out, you put your shades on and take one last look around the room. You remember the case under the bed. You wonder if it’s a coincidence that you saw that dream after what you found yesterday. ...Maybe not. You should haul it out. It probably isn’t good for you to keep it in your room.

You step out.

You find Kanaya in the hallway, folding ranger jackets. She’s got hers tied around her waist. It almost gives her a regal, Victorian sort of silhouette. She looks at you as you come up. “Good morning.”

“Hey,” you say. “Is everyone still asleep?”

“Most people are, I think,” she says. “Karkat and Aradia are out, Tavros is cooking, and Equius got up early to feed the… horses. But other than that, I think everyone’s still in bed.”

“Hm,” you say. Kanaya sets down the jacket she’s folding and examines your face. You catch her eyes. She looks a little worried. “What’s up?”

“You look tired,” she says. “Did you sleep well?”

“Ah, well,” you say. You don’t really feel up to telling her about your nightmare. Instead, you lean against the wall and try to look cool. “Not in any way I can’t handle.”

“Are you sure?” Kanaya asks and picks up a pile of folded jackets. “A lot of rangers get nightmares on their first few nights here. We have some melatonin in the infirmary, if you need it.”

“Nightmares? Who said anything about nightmares?” you ask, chuckling way too breathily. Her expression shifts in a way that makes it clear that your cover is blown.

“How bad was it?” she asks. You sigh.

“Fucked up,” you say. “But, like I said, I can deal with it. Seriously.”

“...Alright,” Kanaya says, though she sounds a little reluctant. You take a look at the clothes she’s carrying.

“You’re doing laundry pretty early.”

“Mm-hmm,” she says. Thank god. Saved by the subject change. “I had the feeling it would rain again later today, so I thought I’d bring them in now. Seeing as I didn’t have anything better to do. I just have to take these to storage now.”

“I can help carry them,” you suggest.

“Oh, would you? I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure.”

You and Kanaya go to a storage room in the main building. It’s full of shelves and shelves of various clothes and knick-knacks. Sunscreen, extra cutlery, cleaning products, towels and blankets, a fire extinguisher, so on and so forth. You’re guessing this storage is for the stuff that’s needed indoors, while the outdoor sheds are for outdoor stuff. There’s so much stuff here that you never thought would be that important.

You head to the cafeteria to keep Tavros company while he cooks. Oatmeal porridge.

Aradia and Karkat trudge in somewhere around 6:45, soaked. Kanaya smiles and whispers, “I knew it would rain.”

Karkat and Aradia sit across from you and Kanaya. Karkat wipes wet hair form his face. “Fucking hate the weather here. You can’t see the goddamn rain coming! Ever! I’d be fine with it if it didn’t sneak up on me like the plague on Medieval Europe.”

“You just need to learn to feel it,” Kanaya says. “You’d know it was coming if you knew the signs.”

“You and your signs.” Karkat shoves an angry spoonful of porridge into his mouth and winces from how hot it is. He swallows it labouredly.

“Kanaya is right, you know,” Tavros says. “M- my grandma told me, when I was little-”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Karkat says. “What’s so different about the rain here that the signs that it’s coming are so much harder to see?”

“You know exactly what,” Aradia says knowingly. “I actually want to know about Tavros’ grandma.”

“Yeah,” Tavros says breathily and fiddles with his hands. A nervous tic, by the looks of it. “She was som- she was something of a witchdoctor. She’d always say she could feel things in her bones before they happened. Y’know… rain and, mm… death and things like that.”

“I had a friend like that,” you say. “She could tell shit that was gonna happen before it did. It was fuckin’ freaky.”

“We have a few palm readers of our own, too,” Karkat says. His face lights up with something like frustrated recognition. “And if my ears don’t betray me, here comes one now.”

“Hey, losers!” Terezi yells from the doorway.

Soon enough, the cafeteria is full. Kanaya, Tavros, Nepeta, Equius, Karkat and Aradia are all crowded around you. There are three conversations going on at the same time. Nepeta and Tavros are softly and fervently debating about what kind of hay to order for the stables. Karkat is yelling to Kanaya about the book you saw him reading last night. Aradia has clearly not read the book, but is teasing him about it anyway. Equius is staring forward into middle distance and sweating bullets. You don’t know why, and you kind of don’t want to.

You get up to grab some water from the jug, lying on its side on a table at the edge of the cafeteria. You try to twist the cap, but it won’t budge. You try a few more times. Eridan scoffs behind you.

“It’s stuck again,” he grumbles, holding his own cup. Then, over his shoulder, he shouts, “Equius! The jug.”

Equius shambles over. You’re sort of surprised he doesn’t knock a table or something over while he’s making his way. Dude is probably twice as wide as you. You and Eridan step to the side to let him twist the cap of the jug. He barely touches it before it comes off. Water spills all over the floor and Equius grimaces. “Oh, my.”

Eridan dives in under him, twisting his spine to avoid touching Equius, and catches some of the pouring water into his cup. Then he leaves Equius to fumble with the jug, trying to fit the cap back into place.

“Shoot,” Equius mutters to himself. He startles when he notices you’re still there. “Excuse the profanity.”

You’re starting to regret taking this job. “It’s fine.”

“Dave,” Nepeta says as you’re finishing up your porridge. “Karkat told me you’re going out for a trail ride today.”

“Huh?” you ask. Everyone in your little table group has their eyes locked on your with varying levels of intensity in their eyes. “Oh, yeah. I guess he did mention that.”

“That’s so fun! You’ll be riding Arthour,” Nepeta says.

“Arthour’s mine,” Equius says, sweating. “But he is very good for beginners.”

“He’s so sweet,” Nepeta says. “He’s so obedient and calm. He’s always the first pick for newbies’ trail rides. You’ll love him. Have you ever ridden before?”

“Uh, yeah, a little,” you say, remembering the foul smell of the stables where you and John used to take riding lessons when you were 14 or 15. It was only for a semester, and only because he wanted to. Then he lost interest and dragged you into judo instead. “Can’t say I’m an equestrian, but I know the basics.”

“Oh, thank god,” Karkat says. “I don’t think I could make it through trying to explain all that shit that Sollux had to learn when he first showed up.”

“As if you did most of the teaching,” Aradia says with amusement in her voice. Then, to you, she says, “ever been on a trail ride before?”

You shake your head, and Nepeta squeals. “You’ll love it! Feeling the wind in your hair and hearing the trees around you-”

“Except we’re going on a tour ride,” Karkat interrupts. “Just to see the forest. No wild and free riding.”

Nepeta sighs, like she’s disappointed and looks at you like she’s sorry. “I guess you’ll have to wait for that.”

“I think I’ll manage,” you say.

You, Nepeta and Equius make your way across the yard. It’s not raining now. It’s just the smell of the petrichor and the wet ground, and the gray clouds hanging overhead like they’re threatening. It’s so cold, this far north. It’s not even September yet and you’re freezing in your gear.

The field around the stable is full of life now. Not like yesterday. Most of the horses seem to be out of the stable and out on the field. You figure someone must have come over before breakfast to let them out. Equius unlatches the gate, and immediately most of the horses on the field start to rush over to you.

At the front of the herd is a stark white horse. It runs straight to Karkat and almost tackles him. He grunts when it runs into him, rubbing him with its head. It whinnies loudly, but it doesn’t sound the way that you think a horse is supposed to sound. It’s shrill and harsh, more like a shriek like a neigh. It startles you, but the other rangers don’t seem surprised. Karkat just pats the horse on its snout.

The white horse is the only one to run to Karkat. The others flock around Nepeta, sticking their noses in her hands and pockets. Nepeta laughs. “Calm down! I don’t have any treats!”

Equius looks far more comfortable here than inside. He almost looks blissful in a really disturbing way. Nepeta is almost invisible from under the mountain of the horses seeking affection from her. She’s wrestling - and you do mean wrestling - with a small pony, the brindled one you saw her riding earlier. She laughs and the horse licks her face and nuzzles her.

“This is Pounce de Leon,” Nepeta explains. “She’s mine.”

“She looks really nice,” you say, but you can’t help feeling a little uncomfortable around all these big creatures. You’ve been around horses before, but not this much. You reach over to pat Pounce’s head and are responded with avoidance. You quickly draw your hand away. Nepeta laughs.

“She’s a little shy.”

“Alright,” you say. “So who here is, uh, Arthour?”

“Him,” Equius says and gestures to a large, dapple gray horse slowly walking towards him. The horse is large and muscular - much like Equius himself - with its mane styled like… well, you don’t know what it’s called, but it’s tied up into many little braided knots along the back of its neck. It comes up to Equius and lets itself be pet. You step closer, carefully, and Equius moves to the side to let you introduce yourself to Arthour. It sniffs your hand and then places its muzzle on it. You give it a few pats. This may be one of the biggest horses you’ve ever seen.

“Alright, can we get going?” Karkat says. The white horse is walking alongside him, and he has a hand on the side of its neck.

You follow Nepeta, Equius and Karkat - alongside the herd of horses - towards the stable building. You walk by Nepeta. “So what’s with the white one? Karkat’s buddy.”

“Oh, that’s Crabdad,” Nepeta says. “He hand-reared him, I think, so he’s kind of bonded to him. Just like Pounce is mine and Arthour is Equius’.”

You nod. No mention of the freaky neigh.

The stable doesn’t smell like you remember the stable you used to ride at smelling like. It’s not really horse shit that it smells like here. It’s more like… an aquarium, or an unseasoned roast chicken. You don’t know. Some of the horses are still inside here. Karkat and Equius walk off to the tack room. At least, that’s where you think they’re going. Nepeta starts leading the horses back into their stalls.

“Why are you locking them all up?” you ask her.

“Some of them have a tendency to escape when rangers are out on the field,” she explains. “Even if not all of us are. I guess they get worried. So we put them in whenever someone is out.”

You leave her to it. You walk around the stable, looking at each of the horses. For most of them, it’s pretty easy to tell which one belongs to which ranger. The thick, seal brown Clydesdale named Tinkerbull? Not hard to guess that’s Tavros’. And could the tall, imposing Friesian named Dolorosa belong to Kanaya? You’re willing to hedge your bets. But as you come to the end of the stable, to the last filled stall, you stop.

A grullo horse with a tuft on its chin, a white face and stark blue, somehow almost sheepish eyes stares back at you. It’s like it sees you in a way none of the other horses have done thus far. You take a step closer. The board in front reads: _Capri-Sun._

_Capri-Sun._ , you mouth to yourself. A quick glance and count in your head, and you realize this horse is an extra. A twelfth horse in a stable for 11 rangers. You take another look at him and reach out a hand. Capri-Sun sniffs it, and slowly places his snout on your palm. Something about this horse is strange. You pat its head. Its fur feels coarser than it should.

“Hey,” Karkat snaps. You take a quick step away from Capri-Sun. Karkat is standing there, holding Crabdad on a lead. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Man, relax. I was just looking around,” you say.

“Oh, yeah, and touching animals that don’t belong to you?” he snarls. Crabdad makes another one of those borderline-shreaklike neighing noises. “Keep your hands to yourself next time.”

“Why?” you ask. “Whose horse is this?”

“That’s none of your fucking business,” Karkat says. “Get back over here and get saddled up.”

You follow him back into the middle of the stable, where Equius and Nepeta seem to have tacked Arthour up. You step closer. It’s been over ten years since you were last on a horse. Nepeta moves aside to let you hop on, but before you do, Karkat stops you.

“Wait,” he says, and digs around in his back. He pulls out a handgun and offers it to you. “Here.”

“W- is that real?” you ask. Karkat looks at you like you’ve gone insane.

“Yes, it’s real! It’s also loaded. You’ve had gun safety training, right? Remember? You signed on the fucking form that you had when you took this job?” You barely manage a nod. Karkat stutters in disbelief. “So take it! What’s the problem? You probably won’t need it anyway, but you need to have it, just in case. There’s a lot of things in the woods, and some of them aren’t friendly.”

With a deep breath, you take the gun and attach it onto your belt. Then, with a little effort, you swing a leg over Arthour’s back. To his credit, the horse stays remarkably still and stable. You’re glad. It’s been a hot second since you experienced the world from horseback. Likewise, Karkat mounts Crabdad.

Nepeta and Equius lead you out to the central yard and bid you goodbye, and Karkat and Crabdad lead you and Arthour onto the trail.

It starts off as relatively well-kept gravel road, but soon the path you’re riding on is pretty much just that: a path. At points, it gets so tight that Karkat has to be in front of you, though he tries to be by your side instead whenever he can. Before you know it, you’re surrounded by forest as far as the eye can see on all sides. The trees are towering and dark, and the foliage is thick.

This side of Veilwood is so much louder than the side that you first arrived from. You can hear the loud, shrill singing of the birds, the sounds of crickets and what you imagine must be other species of bugs that don’t live in the States- at least not where you’ve heard them. They call and chirp in ways that sound almost alien. And, on occasion, you can hear a low drone somewhere in the distance. It almost sounds like the mooing of a faraway cow.

Through it all, Karkat keeps talking. He doesn’t seem like he wants to shut up for a second. You’re tuning out most of his explanations about the history of the park, and how there have been rangers here for at least a hundred years, and how the first rangers forged the Fuschia Trail through Veilwood.

“It’s more of a path than a trail,” you point out, looking around at the trees. You see one with a huge hole in its trunk. Weird. “It’s like a fucking foreign planet here. How often do you people come out here?”

“All the time,” Karkat says. “What do you think researchers do out here? Eridan and Feferi ride out to take samples and examine the lake or the rapids or whatever fucking brook they’ve found most recently at least three or four times a week. And Aradia, Vriska and Terezi have been pushing for mapping expeditions for years now. They always do them on the worst nights, so most of the maps they make get ruined.”

“Like weather-wise?” you ask. Karkat shrugs.

“Sometimes, yeah.” Before you have time to ask him to elaborate, he gestures to the forest ahead of you. There’s a huge mass of boulders there, forming two weird piles out of three or four boulders each, so regular that they almost look man-made. “There. You see that rock formation? It’s called the Maid’s Needles. I don’t know why it’s called that. They don’t look like needles to me.”

“Who’s the Maid?” you ask. Karkat gives you a look, and you shrug. “Figured there’d be some, like, old myth about it or something.”

“Not to my knowledge. Think it’s just a name,” Karkat grumbles and rides on ahead. “Here, on our right. Don’t ride too close to the edge.”

“The edge of what?” you barely have time to ask before the forest opens up to reveal a cliffside. You’re glad you’re not scared of heights. You didn’t think this kind of cliff existed in this part of the world. You can see a wide moorland, dotted with sparse forest below. As if on cue, a splash of sunlight comes in from between the clouds and streaks through the valley, like a stripe. “Woah.”

“Be careful, shithead,” Karkat calls out. He’s riding ahead of you, now, so he can’t see you. “I’ve heard that someone fell in decades ago and their body still hasn’t been found.”

“Fun,” you mumble.

The trail moves back into the forest soon, leaving the cliffside behind. The ground becomes more hilly and unstable. There’s a rocky hill on your left, and Karkat points up to its top. “That’s called Dreamers’ Respite. There actually is a story about that one. Aradia says that in the early oughts, people used to say that if you slept there overnight, you’d see your future husband in your dreams or some shit. They had more than one teen girl sneaking in on Midsummer Night.”

“Do you believe it?” you ask. Karkat seems like a romantic.

“Psh, no. Bullshit fairy tales,” Karkat says, but you can’t tell who he’s trying to convince more. You follow the trail to a small glade on the other side of the Dreamer’s Respite. It’s a few rocks where the trees open up a little bit. You can see flowers and small mushrooms dotting the ground. Karkat brings Crabdad to a stop. “Let’s stop here for a second. You can look around, if you want, but don’t go too far.”

You bring Arthour to a stop. You’re kind of surprised at how responsive he is, even to you. You get off him to stretch your legs. Karkat seems to be busy with his bag. You start to look around the clearing. Sunlight is starting to seep down the side of the Dreamers’ Respite and to the mossy ground at your feet. You take in the smells and sounds of Veilwood.

You start to stretch your legs a little, when you see a strange splash of colour on the ground, attached to one of the trees. Looks like a bracket mushroom, but it’s not coloured like a normal mushroom. It’s tinted a weird purple and bubblegum pink. You go closer. Its root is reddish, melting into the wood, like it’s dissolving it. You can clearly see spores on it, but they’re shiny little orbs, almost like fish eggs.

“Hey, Karkat?” you ask. He grumbles a response. “Come take a look at this. I’ve never seen anything like it. What kind of mushroom is this?”

You hear the crunching of the moss as Karkat gets off Crabdad and walks over to you. He stops beside you and then slaps your hand away where you’re about to reach out to touch the mushrooms. “Do not touch that!”

“What? Why?” you ask. You catch a glimpse of his expression as he crouches down and looks at the mushrooms on the trunk of that tree. It’s shock and disbelief, bordering on fear. You laugh. “What is it? A new species?”

“No, shut up, shut the fuck up,” Karkat says and messes with his walkie talkie. It fizzes into life, and he hurriedly speaks into it. “We have a problem. There are mirth mushrooms in Veilwood. Sporing, too.”

Eridan’s voice is the one that responds, fizzling in your walkie talkie. _“What? You can’t be for real.”_

“I wish I wasn’t;” Karkat says.

_“Where exactly?”_

“Eastern side of Dreamers’ Respite,” Karkat responds. “Looks like an isolated colony, but I don’t know how far southwest it reaches.”

_“You’re sure it’s actually mirth? If you’re close to Dreamers’ Respite, it could just be one of the species from up there,”_ Feferi says over the walkie talkie.

“No, I’m positive it’s mirth,” Karkat says. You have no fucking clue what they’re talking about. “I know mirth when I see it, Feferi. I’m not stupid.”

_“Well, bring in a sample,”_ Eridan’s voice says. _“We’ll see if you’re right.”_

“I am!” Karkat snaps. You watch him pull out a small ziploc bag and a pocketknife. Jesus, how many weapons is he carrying? He slices off a small part of the mushroom very carefully and it slips into the ziploc bag. He gives you a glare, and you quickly close your mouth when you realize it was hanging open. Karkat jerks his head towards Arthour and Crabdad. “Get saddled. Tour is over. We need to get back to camp.”


End file.
